In the basement of MoMA’s Debra and Leon Black Family Film Center, on levels T2/T1, the glamor of the 20th-century exhibition “Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography” takes over the space. In this room plunged into darkness – deliberately designed as a twilight zone – the stars shine before anyone who comes to see them.
The exhibition is organized by Ron Magliozzi, Curator, with Katie Trainor, Senior Collections Manager, and Cara Shatzman, Collections Specialist, Film Department. A symphony of the work of many photographers, pulling back the curtain on what retouching was like behind the scenes, before technologies like Photoshop came into play. “These are photographs that were produced to accomplish a job. That job was about selling celebrity, and selling fashion and gender – gender roles, especially in the classic Hollywood era.”said Ron Magliozzi.
What makes this collection so special is the depth of its roots in the history of MoMA itself. From the first decades of the museum, images were archived alongside films, because it was already understood that photographs were part of the history of cinema in the same way as the films themselves. This belief ultimately led to the acquisition of the editorial archives of two essential fan magazines, and the photographs that lived in these holdings are a major reason why this exhibition exists today.
More than 60 photographers of the era, who worked in close contact with Hollywood stars, created timeless pieces capturing the elegance of the 20th century. And it’s not just Hollywood: athletes, politicians and socialites have also found their way into these archives, showing how far the celebrity machine has truly extended its reach.
But the exhibition does not stop at the photographs. Film screenings are also part of the experience, including screen tests directed by Andy Warhol himself. Magliozzi evokes Warhol’s place in the journey: it refers to “the notion of someone who is famous” and to the idea of control. Warhol asked his subjects to remain still, not to blink, to just stare. There is also the screen test of Dennis Hopper, who sent everything to hell. “He basically turned the exercise into a selfie, making faces and pointing the camera at himself.”said Magliozzi.
The images are hung in living room density, and this was no coincidence. “The density of social networks, the overload of images that you have to navigate, we wanted to somehow reproduce this environment”explains Magliozzi. The exhibition features not only portraits, but also images of the writers and directors who created glamour, those who produced the celebrities and the characters they played.
A story written in silver gelatin and correction fluid
The exhibition draws from a collection that spans more than seven decades of press photography, from 1921 to 1996. Its scope goes well beyond Hollywood: Louis Armstrong, Jackie Robinson, Lena Horne, Diana Ross, Harry Belafonte and Oprah Winfrey sit alongside Joan Crawford, Carole Lombard and Anna May Wong. Together, they map the extent of the celebrity industrial complex and the coded visual language it deployed. Beneath the glamor lay a highly gendered system, marked by racial tensions caused by social choreography, as the curators note. The photographs of Harry Belafonte and Joan Fontaine on the set of Island in the Sun (1957), for example, have a significance that goes beyond the simple promotion of a film: the interracial couple was considered so subversive that studio officials reportedly demanded changes to certain images before their broadcast. The original prints, with their tape marks and cropping indications, survive in the MoMA archives as witnesses to a negotiation between representation and control.
What “Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography” makes viscerally visible is the work hidden behind the illusion. Silhouette paint applied around Rock Hudson’s head. The blue pencil crop marks on Dolores del RÃo’s smile. The correction fluid that makes Joan Crawford stand out in luminous relief on a dark background. These traces are not conservation accidents: they are the constituent stages of a production flow in which the laboratory technician, the retoucher and the model maker were as essential to the image of the star as the photographer who had pressed the shutter button. “I told myself it was a bit like AIâ€admits Magliozzi. “They actually altered the image, added body parts or deleted others.” The analogy is less provocative than apt. What Photoshop industrialized, these anonymous hands had already perfected – one brushstroke after another.
What also makes this exhibition truly striking is the degree of manipulation of these images, long before the existence of Photoshop. Painted bodies, erased figures, manufactured poses. None of the most iconic characters have been spared. “Nowadays, I think everyone plays the show game. I don’t think people necessarily reject it. There is a commitment with her.”adds Magliozzi. “Face Value” invites visitors to look at the photographs, and to look at themselves. As the commissioner says: “I hope the exhibition makes people more aware of how they perceive a celebrity, and themselves.–After going through “Face Value,” it’s hard not to give in to it.
« Face Value : Celebrity Press Photography » is on view at MoMA in New York until June 21, 2026.
